Prof. Jonathan Howard Smith

I am Joe Smith, Director of The Royal Geographical Society. I’m a neighbour! We are probably the closest cultural institution to the Goethe-Institut in London.

I recall coming to a green politics event in the early 1990s. I was a PhD student but also very active in the UK’s Green Party – a volunteer in the Press Office and a Youth Speaker in the Greens’ slightly grandly titled ‘shadow cabinet’. And my undergrad dissertation was on the practical consequences of the West German Greens’ philosophical commitment to grassroots democracy. So it felt like the Goethe-Institut gave me a direct connection here in the UK to what was one of the liveliest places on the planet for green politics. It also felt like a rather cool building that had found a contemporary design language that allowed it to ‘step over’ the structures of stuccoed South Kensington.

I came to other events that connected environmental change, culture and politics in a very intuitive way that both formed and spoke to my own perspective on these themes. I do wish I’d taken the time to learn German! Despite my failings in this respect, the Institut has given me a warm welcome and an open route to connecting with German culture across my lifetime that I very much value.

Although I’m looking at it from a great distance it strikes me that many in 60s Germany were trying to find positive ways to come to terms with a terrible recent history. Lived experiences of doing and experiencing great harm ran through almost all families at that time. At its most positive the period feels like an incredibly productive, creative context, where openness to new ideas in design and culture reflected a country that wanted to ‘start again’ and make a positive contribution to the wider world. The Goethe-Institut is one very tangible example of that spirit.